Well, the liquid latex works. The 'whole head impression' thing ain't so great, however. To get it off, I just peeled it off inside out. After taking a test cast of the inside, I found that taking it off had creased it. It also isn't thick enough to hold its shape on its own. If I made it thick enough to do that, I doubt i'd be able to take it off.

So, i'm going to do liquid latex impression in two separate halves, and then try to marry the two resulting latex halves together by painting the seams with more liquid latex. Should work.

I'm also going to make the impression super-ass thick. I'm going to buy a big enough container of the stuff that I can just dip it in everytime I want to put a new coat on. Should be really fast to do.

I'm also fairly sure i'm going to redo the clay head. It's just not quite big enough, and it's bugging me. Should be fairly easy the third time around though. It's not too discouraging; it's always better once you've had a practice run. And I would have been bummed if the key piece of sculpure for the film, that's going to get the most screen time, wasn't as good as it could have been. After all, it's only about 10-16 hours of work in a project involving hundreds and hundreds of hours of work.

It seems that it was a good idea to do Cornelisz's head and armature first; he's got a beard, and a great deal of his head is covered by a hat. So it's comparatively easy to cover up suckage.

I've also solved another problem; up to now, i've been endeavoring to cast the heads in two separate halves - that means that i'll end up with a prominent line where the two halves meet on the finished thing. Not a problem for this head, as the beard covers it. But none of the other characters have beards.

I've found that I can cover the entire head with liquid latex (thereby taking the impression with one piece only), and then peel the whole thing off inside out.

I think i've solved the problem; what i've been looking for is a flexible material that I can use to take an impression of the clay head; flexible so that I can remove it even with the undercuts (if I cast it in plaster, it would get stuck). I just used the same liquid latex.

The stuff has different working properties than I thought; I applied very thick poured-on coats, and dried them partially with a hair dryer. Then I put more on. That is to say, I was able to build up a very thick layer in one evening. When I was making the rubber mask for my previous failed attempt, I was putting on very thin coats and letting it dry for half a day. You can really go hard with the stuff, and it will still cure & dry evenly.

So now i've got a complete rubber mould of the head. I'm going to take a test cast of the face area with alginate to make sure the details transferred correctly. Then i'm going to make the rubber mask, by pouring latex inside the other one, swishing it around, and draining out the excess.

Boy, i'm getting pretty sick of this crap. I'd like to begin making a film already.

FAILURE

It sort of worked. The liquid latex captured the detail very well, and it's suprisingly durable.

But the goddamn alginate shrunk over the week that I was applying coats of latex. The final rubber mask was about 2/3 the size of the original. Which means it didn't work.

Jesus, i'm just trying to take an impression of the front side of a clay head. It's taking up alot of time and money. Shit.

I'm doing some ambitious stuff with this film; it feels like the real challenge is to get all the stuff built, and working properly. Including the greenscreen composite stuff.

Doing the actual shooting doesn't seem intimidating at all by comparison. I feel like i'll be able to knock off shots very quickly.

Discovered something else about alginate; i've noticed that little thin pieces of the stuff lying around my table are turning white and becoming brittle; that means that the stuff has a limited life. Once it dries out, it's toast. Though I guess I could keep it in a tupperware container with some water. Like tofu.

I put the first coat of liquid latex on my alginate impression. The alginate is still sweating a bit. I hope it doesn't interfere with the drying of the latex. I did a test already to see if it would work, and it did. But these hunks of alginate contain alot more water than my test peices.

I bought a couple different brands of liquid latex - turns out they vary quite a bit. One is thick, one is very watery. They both have their uses.

Top picture is the head after the last pour. I found that using alginate on bare clay causes lifting of the clay, and can damage fine edges. Two very thin coats of lacquer fixed that.

After inumerable tests, I finally figured out how to get rid of the fucking bubbles. And yes, that's what type of bubbles they are. I tried a thinner mixture, more mixing, pouring water into the alginate and vise versa, but nothing made any difference. Then I noticed that when I peeled the alginate out of the mixing containers, the undersides were smooth. So, I epoxied a piece of wood onto the clay bust (see second from top photo) and put the sucker in upside down. After pouring in the alginate, I heaved the head up and down like a plunger for a good while.

And it worked! Finally. I can get on to the next step, making a rubber mask out of liquid latex from the alginate.

Here's what I mean by 'sweating'; after 24 hours, the alginate is still soaking wet and slimy-ass. The solution was just to use heat; a blow dryer, specifically. I'm sure it'd dry on its own eventually, but would probably take a week.

This here is pour number one, the failed pour. The wood brace is to hold the head in place, so it doesn't fall over within the mould while i'm tapping the thing against the table (trying to remove bubbles).

Here's some technical stuff, in case someone reading this is going to do the same thing, and doesn't want to repeat the expensive mistakes.

The interior dimensions of the above mould is about 5"x4". The alginate came in 1 lb bags (about 30$). A 1lb bag would do two + of the above pours.

The ratio I used was 1 part alginate to 1.16 water. It was a little thick; about the minumum amount of water I would use. Specifically, I used 650ml alginate to 750ml water (cold). Then I mixed the hell out of it with an electric mixer.

I took some pictures, but I don't got om with me. Just boring old words.

The alginate is giving me grief. I did a whole bunch of expensive tests (alginate ain't cheap), to determine the working properties of this thing. Then I made a little box with the clay head inside, and poured off mould number one. The stuff didn't quite make it into a few crevices, and I haven't figured out how to get the air bubbles out of the stuff. So the surface of the resulting mould is pock marked with holes. I'm going to try again today; gonna try mixing the alginate powder into water, and not the other way around. I'm also going to try making it much thinner, so it won't hold the bubbles.

The other problem with the stuff; the thing won't stop 'sweating'; it's been overnight with the first mould, and it still feels wet and slimy. I expect that the sogginess will interfere with the liquid latex that I intend to pour in there.

This casting is also leaving the clay bust a little worse for wear. I'm going to coat it with lacquer today as well, to prevent re-wetting of the clay.

I hate casting stuff.

Something fills a little off with my clay head. When I stick it on top the armature, it just don't feel quite right. Might be a little small. I did a quick photoshop, and it seemed to be right, scale-wise. I'm going to do a more particular photoshop test (pasting a picture of the armature and the head over a human silhouette) with exact proportions. I really hope I didn't fuck it up to the extent that I have to make a new head. If it is a little screwed, i'm hoping I can fix it with facial hair and the hat; I could imply a larger forehead with the hat.

Otherwise, today is going to be making little liquid latex samples for tests. And hopefully casting the clay head with alginate, and starting the buildup for the finished product.

My current phase of production, i.e. 'tooling' for making miniature articulated animatable heads is going to be the technically hardest part of this project, by a pretty wide margin. But all the steps/techniques i've attempted so far have worked, which is nice.

I intend to lay out all my steps with details; maybe somebody reading this someday will benefit from what i've learned.

Now that i've got an un-sucky head, i'm going to cast the whole thing in alginate (fast setting dentist's moulding material). I'm going to do a test first to see how it reacts with unsealed clay - whether or or not it damages or contaminated the surface. May have to use a mould release.

Having covered the whole thing, i'm going to cut the hardened alginate into two halves, making the cut on a line that will be covered with facial hair on the finished product.

Then i'm going to build my rubber mask with liquid latex. The test was successful; I wasn't impressed at first - the shit seemed to be about as strong as rubber cement and very delicate. After you get multiple coats on though, it becomes suprisingly tough and flexible.

The next hard part will come after that; i'm going to have to find a way to cast the inside of the resulting mask with hard resin. The hard resin will be my basis for the 'robotics', which i'll be hacking and sawing etc.

I photoshopped another snapshot of the clay head into one of the HDR set shots. I finally have at least an indication at what this film is going to look like. I think it's cool. And the light matching might not be as hard as I anticipated. Of course, a shot like this would be in the easier category. 

I've been sanding the thing lots, with fine sandpaper. Ain't doing alot, but it's doing something. Cleaned up a few areas. There's a few shots where the camera gets really close into the face. Has to look good that close.

Cornelisz (this guy) is going to pretty easy to animate, facially. His whole movie is that he doesn't care about nuthin' but his painting. So most of the time, he'll just make his impassive lip-curl squiny-face. Kind of a Clint Eastwood spaghetti western type of thing. No talking, all squinting.

How the ass am I gonna make my head? What i'd like to do is take a negative cast of my Cornelisz bust, then pour an alginate-like material in it, with an inner head mechanism inside. Foam latex would be the way to do this, but I don't know anything about it or where to get it. Will have to do some research. It even occured to me to use alginate, but it's probably too fragile for that.

I've been experiementing with liquid latex (multiple coats brushed on, air dry) but it's taking forever just to find out if it's gonna work or not. And it seems pretty breakable. Maybe itll get stronger when it's thick.

I photoshopped on beard, and made the colour a bit skin-tone-ish. It's fun to do.

A couple of the photos of this 'ere head i've made look eerily like me. One is quite creepy.

There's a theory out there that the making of every film mirrors the film itself. I hope not. This shit ain't exactly Bambi.

Now that i've got a 90% suck-free head, i've got to turn it into a lightweight, articulated head that can make facial expressions, and junk. How? Not totally sure yet. I'm going to use science, and willpower.

Dear adoring public;

For the next couple of days, i'm doing wee tests with materials; liquid latex, resin, etc. To see how much flex they have, drying times, etc. It's pretty dull, so there's not much to look at.

I'm still waiting for Corn Dog's head to be dry enough to sand. Because i'm so smarty-pants, I know not to put it in the oven to make it dry. I discovered a while ago that that makes the object explode into a bunch of clay shrapnel.

I photoshopped on some fur and hat-ish shapes. Not bad. The bottom image is a bit screwy- high res fancy photo vs. grainy snapshot. But it's fun to see what a final shot might look like.

That's it; no more wet clay working. I'm gonna let the sumbitch dry out now. I'll be doing some more detailing when it's dry - sanding and whatnot. I'm not finishing that sort of work now - everytime I touch the thing, it gets scratched, junk stuck in it, etc.

The thing fell over twice, and smashed the nose up. The first time it was fine, cause I had to rework the thing anyways. But the second time was a bit counter-productive.

The thing is improving slowly. Well, not slowly at all really; i'll work for 15 minutes and then find an excuse to stop. Working on it is like holding my breath. But it ain't too bad. It's looking more and more like the character I picture in my head. I extended the chin, and worked on the mouth a little.

These here are the best pictures; some of them looked pretty D-. Thanks to my handy storyboard, I know that some of the key shots will have this head filling the frame, with lighting coming from below (Halloween style). The head definately doesn't get a passing grade from that angle with that lighting.

He's also looking a little too well-fed. Going to make him a little more wiry looking.

Ears are going to be attached after the fact; they'll probably screw up my casting if I do them now. And I can hide the joins with hair.

One thing I have to watch out for; HDR (high dynamic range) photography will take a pretty smooth, even looking surface, and make it look textured as hell. So Cornelisz's face might end up looking like tree bark if I don't watch out. That may be desirable, but I still should have control over the thing. No excuses. None of that doing random stuff and then saying 'oooh, it looks arty' bullshit.

I tossed a little photoshopping on one of the pics to see how Cornelisz would look with his beard, chops, and crazy-ass hat. I'm going to be able to hide alot of suckage with those things. He's looking a little piggish.

My end goal is to make him a little more vulture-like. My model is my friend Jim Laing.

The Weekend to End Suckiness

I've finally got over the hurdle; i've managed to make something that I don't want to smash. The 'Kevin Nash' press mold worked pretty good - the press mold impression produced was far from perfect, but it gave me enough of a foundation to work around (proper human proportions) that I wasn't floundering around, not getting anywhere. It's still pretty rough, and I haven't devoted any attention to the mouth yet. But the light is at the end of the suck tunnel.

It became clear pretty quickly that I wasn't sucessfully making this thing look like Johannes, who is a young guy of around 16 - it was coming out a bit mean-looking. So I said to hell with plan 'A', and decided to make this character Cornelisz (the bad painter) instead. It may be a mistake - the idea was to make the first armature a character with minimal screen time, as a 'practice' armature to work out the kinks. So maybe i'm making a mistake. Screw it, i'm doing it.

I'm also intentionally going for a pretty realistic look - not terribly stylized in the facial proportions. I'm trying to make the overall appearance more eerie by it's closeness to reality, but neccessary degree of removal from it.

Found myself in another surreal situation; I needed a plastic head to make a push mold with - went to Toys R' Us and bought a stuffed wrestling doll with a plastic head. So, there I was sawing the head off this thing, and being a talking doll, it kept saying wrestling catchphrases while I was chopping away at it. Like 'I'm Kevin Nash, whatch out for my aerial assult'.

Weird.

I'm finally getting in there with this thing and getting my hands dirty. Not much luck so far, i'm getting a feel for what has to be done to make something respectable.

Not liking clay very much. I just don't have a great grasp of the anatomy of the human head. Spent about an hour fighting with a lump of clya, pushing and pulling the stuff back and forth. I could sense the whole time that I really didn't have much of a sense of what the goal was, or how to get there.

The next plan is to make a big push mold from a plastic head I bought. It's not the ideal face for my character, but I figure it'll get me a properly proportioned face right off the bat, which I can then edit to look like my character.

My plans for the head mechanism, casting etc. are a little vague, but i've got ideas. It's essentially going to be a rubber mask extending to the hairline that i'll put over top of a resin cast head containing the moving bits. Hopefully it works.

Well, I think i've got enough reference material and supplies to finally get this damn head done. Hopfully i'll be over the hump this weekend. Gotta quit wasting some much time.

Sometimes I wish I had a partner in this project to share the duties. Which would be good, because the project is so damn big. And the things I enjoy about the process aren't typical - I like building sets, directing, storyboards, etc. Everything except making puppets and animating, really. Which is funny, because those two things seem to be the focus of most stop motion people out there. Collaboration has its pitfalls, but it sure sounds good right now.

Anybody out there? Anybody? 

I'm trying to sculpt a head for my big-ass armature. Johannes is the character. He's first on the list, as he ain't seen very much - sort of a trial run to work out the bugs in he process.

I really fucking hate working with clay. I suck at it. Never been into mold-making and all that stuff either. But I gotta do it.

Hopefully suckage will be kept to a minimum. 

Been taking a short few-week vacation, trying to enjoy the last bit of summer before the 8 months of rain and gloom. Back at it this weekend.

Here's what you get when you trace the contours of the foam, and fill in the blanks between (those parts having been removed to allow a full range of movement). Looks a bit like an underwear model.

I'm aiming for proper human proportions with this character - going to be steering for realism overall. I think there's a degree of removal with stop motion animation, likewise with puppeteering - the real within the unreal-looking. I also think there's an eeriness that increases in degree the closer you get to realism. The familiar, but with one degree of removal - like seeing your dad clean shaven after decades with a beard. For example.

Of course it's key that it still ring as unreal; don't want the puppets to ever be mistaken for real actors (not that there's much chance of that happening).

Now all I needs is hands and feets. Feets will be easy; hands are dependant on tests with liquid latex.

Head is going to be interesting.

Here's Johannes doing some slutty Vogue poses, each sluttier than the next. I gave him a smaller than average waist and chest. The result being he's a little girly. Which is fine, as he is supposed to be young.

The foam scultping may prove to be overkill; we'll see when I get some clothes on him.

I'm being suprised at how easy this is so far; everything is working on the first attempt, without any major backtrack-requiring glitches. It's also not taking very long at all. Which might be a first for me - always seems to take three times as long as I expect, and cost four times as much.

The pink stuff is 1" polyurethane insulating foam. I hated the stuff at first, but now i've got the hang of how to shape it without it crumbling and breaking. It's also very forgiving; if I don't like a part, I just shave it flat, epoxy on a new piece, and then shape that bit.

I don't intend to get too fancy with the body mass - it's just to fill out the costume.

Another quick armature test. Still working good. Though, wooden joints don't move smooth like - tends to be jerky - stopping and starting. Gonna put some powdered graphite lubricant on them. Should fix the problem.

Added some cheesy camera shake just for shits and giggles. I'm probably going to be doing that more than I initially planned. I'm not sure if my 'painterly' asthaetic is going to survive. Might end up just going for 'cinematic' and 'neat-o'.

I've also realized another major benefit to greenscreening armatures into scenes; motion blur. If you play back video frame by frame, you'll see that objects in rapid motion are actually very blurry. Stop motion animation, by contrast, is crystal clear in every frame. Therefore, motion blur is going to add realism, and also disguise sucky-ass animation. I intend to do a good job with the animation, but any opportunity to cheat i'm going to take.

This here's my working photoshop file for design. The grid is on it's own layer, so I can move it around to measure things. It's all to scale. My armature has a skinnier chest than the design. I might bulk it up yet.

I photoshopped a picture of the armature over top a picture of myself. So's I can see how the body mass is going to look. This represents the average shape - Johannes is going to be a little skinnier.

Pretty much finished the first armature. Sure was easy. Though I can't wait for the glitches to become apparent later. That's okay though - that's what this first armature is for. Still need the hands and feets attachments; going to hold off on that for a while until I decide exactly how they're going to be.

Look, an armature! See, I don't just make huge film sets and then smash them before I use them. It was pretty easy and fast too; spent more time on the bus and buying supplies than I did working on it today. Could probably build another one in three hours. Of course this one lacks arms, but that won't take long.

The next step, after confirming that this thing works via animation tests (1st one was a pass), is to build up the body mass with styrofoam. Then I have to make the head. That should be a right awkward bugger, that one. Then its the costume.

The huge scale of this thing seems to be making everything easier. I'm sure it'll make the costumes and head easier too. I've already demonstrated to myself that the animation is easier, as the increments of movement are just much larger than with a teeny armature.

I'm working on the first of the big-ass armatures. Sorry, no pictures yet. Started off by making one joint - seems to work fine.

I'm a bit leary about it - not using standard materials - mostly wood. Though this is for the least-used character (the first armature), so its okay if its a bit of a reject.

The only other notable addition today is a ladder; a real gnarly one. Its based on a spindly warped one I found on the internet while trolling for images a while ago. I added the ropes and whatnot. It was a bit of an afterthought, but i'm glad I made it.

It will sit in two places throughout the film; on the left, and right in the middle while in use. While on the left, it serves to balance out the composition. Note the diagonal rope; this is to continue the curve that starts on the floor. When the ladder is in the middle, it lets me make nicer compositions; I like having some dark lines on one side or the other. Still have a couple more chores to do today on the thing - tommorrow I start on the huge armature.

Last little details/chores. Prettied up the side of the left-hand table, for shots in which it will comprise the left foreground. Added a few little details too; some fancy-ass books in the most visible places (the stacks are made up of lesser props). I wrapped an ugly looking wooden container in leather. I don't know why anyone would have a leather-wrapper container, but there you have it.

Set building is actually my forte, such as it is. But guess what? I suck at animation! And I hate making puppets! And I don't know squat about ties downs, technique, etc. The next few stages of this project should therefore be interesting.

DONE

(Pretty much)

Well, that's it. I'm going to spend tommorrow doing a few odd and ends i've been avoiding, such as staining areas that have been sitting unstained for ages, putting the curtain in permanently, etc. I'm also going to go over old notes and ideas and make sure I haven't missed any little elements that will improve it measurably. Otherwise, that's it. The thing is done. Which is good, because the mere thought of it makes me want to puke.

Some of the angles are a bit awkward looking, but all in all, i'm pretty happy with the thing. I really knuckled down and worked on the design of the thing, as I went along, to a much greater degree than I ever have in the past. Its seems to have paid off. I was comparing it to a still from my last stop motion film (which is now ancient); its definately in a different league all together. Which was the idea.

I recalled an old artist's trick; if you've been staring at something for so long that you've lost objecvtivity and are taking visual elements for granted, all you gots to do is turn the thing upside down. In this case, flip it horizontally. Its pretty effective; it was a bit of shock seeing the thing fresh after having started at so many pictures of it. Looks better than I expected. My first impluse was to say 'i'm going to flip all the images around; looks way better this way'. But its obvious that it doesn't actually look different at all.

Another version of an older HDR picture. Looks neat-o. It somehow makes average things look above average. I'm pretty eager to see some HDR pics of all the piles of props and junk. Don't have any of those yet. Its been a while, in fact.

Its kind of benificial that I don't get to see the set with nice pictures as I go along. There's always something to look forward to; if I could see precisely how its looking all the time, i'd start taking it for granted, and get tired of the thing sooner.

Its pretty tedious putting the props in place; its an awkward reach (nowhere to rest my weight), and there's a hot light on the thing so I can see what i'm doing. Hours of putting a couple items in, viewing with the camera from different angles, altering thing, and glueing them down.

The thing is almost done though, which is good. The weeks are passing by, and weeks count with this project.

Boy, this sure is taking a long time. Not due to the level of detail in the props, as much as the number of the things.

Started today by making another pile of them; sketches, paint brushes, brush handles, books, piles of paper, pots, etc, all assembly line fashion.

See what i'm talking about? The bottom picture is what i'm seeing when i'm in there piddling away on the thing. The top picture is what the camera will see. Looks better.

See the red arrow? You can see the edge of the set down there. I got tired of not being able to get quite as wide as i'd like, so I built a little 3" x 8" extension to fill that space.

Whenever i'm getting grumpy with the results of this thing, I bust out the HDR pics; these particular ones are a bit older - they predate all the piles of junk, etc. Sure looks a hell of a lot better with this type of photography. It's needed for me to see, as the set, which is being designed for specific camera angles and this type of photography, is looking increasingly goofy and odd to the naked eye.